


The Other Queen

by Ruis



Category: Shadowscapes Tarot
Genre: F/F, Music, Romance, Tarot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-25 03:02:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17716778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruis/pseuds/Ruis
Summary: When she noticed the other queen for the first time, it was as the absence of a note in her song.





	The Other Queen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mementomoe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mementomoe/gifts).



When she noticed the other queen for the first time, it was as the absence of a note in her song. 

All that surrounded her, from the foxes attentively listening at her feet to the birds nesting in the very top of her living, ever growing harp, became part of her composition of the forest as one living and breathing and, most importantly, singing entity. Nothing in the forest escaped her notice, and nothing was too insignificant to not be included at least as a few tapped strings describing the fall of acorns from a squirrel's paw or a tinkling of high notes in honor of the tiny vole barely escaping a predator sufficiently distracted by the melody filling the air. 

The Queen of Wands listened as much as she made the forest listen. 

She herself was part of that eternal song. She reigned by the universal truth only found in music since, ages ago, she had tied a few strands of her own golden hair to a tiny sapling, tentatively plucking her first out-of-tune scale. So at the movement barely registered in the corner of her eye, her first instinct was to seek for the right strings to strum, the harmonies best suited to memorize the sudden appearance of a dancer swaying to a tune that undeniably wasn't hers, a rhythm that reminded her of crashing waves over the rustling dry leaves of late summer her tree-harp had just been singing of. Her breath caught, her fingers faltered for the first time.

For one short moment, the forest was silent.

Receding like the tide, the dancer was long gone before the Queen of Wands had caught more than a glimpse of her grace, of long black hair and graceful motions, of a flowing dress that seemed to be cut from the very boundary layer of sea and sky. Only one heartbeat, but a trace of her sure steps stayed behind in the music, an ebb and flow, innocence lost and the new awareness that below the fertile soil, below the harp's deepest roots, the ground had been the floor of the ocean before the world had even started dreaming of trees. One heartbeat, then the Queen of Wands took up her melody again, subtly changed yet doubtless still singing the truth of the forest.

Once attuned, she could never again not hear the presence of ancient seashells under her feet.

So the next time the Queen of Cups came upon the flood, the song was prepared to catch her, to match her steps with dancing chords. The clearing was overflowing with light while she danced to the tune of the forest, closer to the deepest core, closer to the harpist commanding her closer, still closer, touching the strings of harp and heart and body. Smiling, she breathed onto the half-forgotten low string closest to the tree trunk, then let her hand follow, joining her own notes, dissonant at first, then adding the bass to the melodious unity of queens, playing, kissing, praising air and ground and forest and the thrum of the deepest sea. 

And the song flowed stronger than ever.


End file.
